re: #268 Yeah Sure WhatEVs

Anyone have a sub to The Economist? I’d love to know what this says and what the stats are behind it.

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Joe biden’s job-approval rating stands at 39%, putting him roughly in a tie for lowest of any president at this point in his term in the history of American polling. In all six states that could prove decisive he trails by between one and six percentage points. In the two where he is closest, Wisconsin and Michigan, Democratic candidates’ margins have under-performed the final polls by an average of six points in the past two elections. Even if he wins both, Mr Biden would still need one more swing state to secure the 270 electoral votes necessary for re-election.

These numbers suggest that the race is hardly a “toss-up”. True, the five months remaining before the vote give Mr Biden time to make up ground, and the polls may underestimate his true support. But it is also possible that his deficit could widen, and that the candidate to benefit from any polling error could be Donald Trump.

In 2016 most pundits and forecasters found it unfathomable that a manifestly unqualified candidate like Mr Trump could win the presidency. This bias was reinforced by polls that consistently put Hillary Clinton in the lead. Now, after a tumultuous presidency that yielded two impeachments and a riot at the Capitol, the prospect that voters might willingly return to office a man recently convicted of 34 felonies seems nearly as outlandish.

Yet surveys suggest it is more likely than not. The Economist’s statistical model of the election—which relies solely on polls, past results and economic data, and knows nothing of Mr Trump’s statements or record in office or in the courts—gives Mr Biden a 34% chance of staving off a second Trump term. That means a victory for Mr Biden would count as only a mild surprise, somewhat more likely than the 30% share of days on which it rains in London. Four years ago this week this model gave Mr Biden an 83% chance.

Why it’s looking bad for Biden
Starting with the national fundamentals, our model’s expectation for Mr Biden (before seeing a single horse-race poll) is that he should win 50.5% of the two-party vote—a bit above his current 49.4% share in national polls, though below the 52.3% he won in 2020. The model thinks he is slightly more likely to gain ground on Mr Trump during the next five months than to lose it: on average, it expects Mr Biden to pick up half a percentage point, yielding a tie in the national popular vote.

Unfortunately for the president, state-level polls do not suggest that the electoral-college advantage Mr Trump enjoyed in 2016 and 2020 has eroded materially. Mr Biden trails by around five points in the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, all of which voted for him four years ago. Our model gives him just a 24% chance of holding on to Georgia, where his lost popularity with black voters is most damaging, and 31% and 36% shots in Arizona and Nevada, where his losses among Latinos hurt him.